Obtaining the location or position of a mobile device that is accessing a wireless network may be useful for many applications including, for example, emergency calls, personal navigation, asset tracking, locating a friend or family member, etc. Existing position methods include methods based on measuring radio signals transmitted from a variety of devices including satellite vehicles (SVs) and terrestrial radio sources in a wireless network such as base stations and access points. In methods based on terrestrial radio sources, a mobile device may measure the timing of signals received from two or more base stations and determine times of arrival, time differences of arrival and/or receive time-transmit time differences. Combining these measurements with known locations for the base stations and known transmission times from each base station may enable location of the mobile device using such position methods as Observed Time Difference Of Arrival (OTDOA) or Enhanced Cell ID (ECID).
To further help location determination (e.g. for OTDOA), Positioning Reference Signals (PRS) may be transmitted by base stations in order to increase both measurement accuracy and the number of different base stations for which timing measurements can be obtained by a mobile device. However, location accuracy may be impaired by a number of factors including errors, imprecision in location measurements and multipath effects, where a PRS signal may be reflected, refracted or scattered by intervening obstacles such as trees, walls, buildings and traffic. Methods and techniques to mitigate or overcome such factors may thus be beneficial.